The Role of Teaching Culture in the Teaching of English

Teaching culture is an important part of language teaching. In this thesis I will present the importance of teaching culture within the framework of language classes through the example of an American Holiday, Thanksgiving. In the first part I will introduce the theoretical background of teaching culture in general. Then I describe American holidays with special emphasis on Thanksgiving. I made a survey where I asked both teachers and students about their experiences on the area of teaching/learning culture. The outcome of the survey is that teachers agree that teaching culture is important, the students say that learning grammar is the most important, and learning culture follows only after social English and vocabulary. It becomes clear that it is a major problem that regular coursebooks do not contain relevant material for the teaching of culture. In my thesis I describe the details of my survey and I offer methodological assistance through providing teaching material to teach Thanksgiving.